Kenji Abe will join Bank of America Merrill Lynch's Japan research team as chief Japan equity strategist, according to an internal memo seen by The Asset. He will join the firm on April 2 and will report to Eiichi Katayama, head of Japan research and work closely with Asia-Pacific equity strategist Ajay Kapur and the regional equity strategy team.

Abe joins from Citigroup where he was chief Japan equity strategist. Prior to that, he was Japan equity strategist at Nomura Securities and an economist at Lehman Brothers, where he worked on both the Japan and US economics teams.

Abe began his career at Japan's ministry of finance. He has a BA in economics from the University of Tokyo and a PhD and MA in economics from Johns Hopkins University.